A Rhode Island lawmaker has sent letters to 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling and several other people involved with the bankrupt company, inviting them to testify before the state’s House Oversight Committee.

According to a report from the Daily Journal, Congresswoman Karen MacBeth, a member of the committee, sent the letters asking for testimony from Schilling and six other people from 38 Studios. The Rhode Island House Oversight Committee is investigating the $75 million loan from Rhode Island to 38 Studios, issued in 2010, that brought the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning developer to the state, which 38 Studios then failed to pay back.

The collapse of the deal and 38 Studios has left Rhode Island owing some $90 million, the Daily Journal reports.

MacBeth’s letters also went to various people in the Rhode Island government involved in the deal. They include Kieth Stokes, the executive director of the state’s Economic Development Corp., which made the deal with 38 Studios, and his then-deputy, Michael Saul; EDC employee Sean Esten, who questioned making the loan in the first place; Steven Costantino, a Rhode Island lawmaker who sponsored the bill that created the loan program in the first place, along with co-sponsor and former Rep. Jon Brien; and attorney Michael Corso.

Schilling, Stokes and Saul all are defendants in a lawsuit brought forward by the Economic Development Corp., along with 11 other people. The suit claims the company was already suffering financially when it accepted the money and that the defendants purposely concealed that information in order to make the deal happen, essentially bilking the state out of its $75 million.

For their part, Schilling and others from 38 Studios have blamed their company’s eventual failure on the actions of the state. The Daily Journal reported that it had not reached Schilling’s attorney, Sarah Heaton Concannon, for comment, but that she had previously called the accusations against him “baseless.”

Though sending letters asking for cooperation might seem like a light touch, MacBeth also considered issuing subpoenas to the witnesses, the Daily Journal report states. She backed off that plan and decided to ask for testimony instead, but MacBeth said she wouldn’t be above compelling the seven people to appear before the committee in May if it comes to that.

You can read much more of GameFront’s in-depth coverage of the 38 Studios story here, here and here.

The results of the December 11 liquidation auction of 38 Studios‘ assets are in, and the law firm managing the sale, Chace Ruttenberg & Freedman, announced that no “acceptable offers” for Project Copernicus or Helios, the integrated social media and gaming platform tied to the MMO, were submitted. Consider this another nail in Copernicus’ coffin, but the law firm did note that it “intends to continue to engage in negotiations with interested parties to sell the remaining assets,” so this may not be the final nail.

The auction did yield some positive results, with Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends and their associated intellectual property sold to an undisclosed bidder. That’s fantastic news for real-time strategy fans hoping the award-winning franchise might once again see the light of day. The trademark for Big Huge Games (the studio behind Rise of Legends and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning) also sold to an undisclosed bidder, though, with the studio now long shuttered its unclear what the purchasing of the trademark means, if anything, for the average gamer.

Again, it’s unclear who is now the proud owner of Rise of Nations as the law firm did not disclose the names of any of the 20 “interested parties” who examined the assets or the remaining five out of those 20 that actually took part in the auction. Fingers crossed it’s someone with RTS experience who is actually interested in making a new Rise of Nations (Creative Assembly, Relic, Blizzard). We expect we’ll be hearing an announcement from the buyers soon.

Come November, The rights to 38 Studios Project Copernicus and Kingdoms of Amalur will have a new owner.

At 9 AM ET on November 13th, Heritage Global Partners will begin a one-day auction that will be responsible for selling off everything in the 38 Studios and Big Huge Games wheelhouse. The auction includes sequel rights, existing games, and assets for games being worked on by the studios, including the “Project Copernicus’” MMORPG.

Here’s a full list of what’s up for grabs, from the HGP website (emphasis added):

“Project Copernicus” an in development Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) including a 10,000 year world history, completed character “races” and playable “zones”

Sequel rights to the critically acclaimed “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”, including development concepts, game artwork and designs.

Merchandise rights and revenue streams associated with the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC title “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”

Intellectual property rights in Big Huge Games’ properties including the classic PC strategy title “Rise of Nations” as well as “Rise of Legends” and the Xbox Live Arcade title “Catan”.

In house developed video game technology including the “Big Huge Games Engine” and the 38 Studios’ gaming, social media and development platform codenamed “Helios”

In other words: You can buy a partially-completed MMORPG, several completed titles (and rights to their sequels), and the framework for a gaming-social media platform. If staffed with the right executives and creative talent, you have a game developer that’s ripe for the taking.

Even better: You might be buying everything detailed above at a serious discount. The Rhode Island government would love to hit the nine-figure mark with this sale — something that definitely will not happen. In fact, the sale probably won’t even net the Ocean State its original $75 million loan guarantee. MMOs are expensive and risky, so the “right price” for this auction is going to e lower than what the state wants.

I think it’s a smart buy for someone with deep pockets, however. Whoever buys the IP could shelve the MMO, use the assets (and the KoA sequel rights) to make a string of safer, smaller offline RPGs, and potentially see a sizable return on their investment.

Okay, Commenter Legion: let’s say the buyer ends up being an established game publisher or developer. Who would you like to see buy the IP, and why? Sound off below!

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s financial and legal headaches won’t be going away any time soon, if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has its way. Bloomberg is reporting that the SEC has turned its jaundiced eye toward 38 Studios, the developer founded by Schilling that went belly up last year in a spectacular meltdown which left the state of Rhode Island on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

According to documents obtained by Rhode Island television station WPRI, the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, the entity which approved taxpayer-subsidized loans of up to $75 million to entice the Kingdoms of Amalur publisher to relocate to the Ocean State, hired legal counsel to respond to SEC inquiries for five months in 2012. The EDC has indicated to Bloomberg that the SEC investigation is ongoing. However, the state has refused to comment on the matter “because of pending litigation.”

The litigation in question is an attempt by the State of Rhode Island to recoup the millions lost when 38 studios declared bankruptcy. The loans, funded by the sale of federally taxable municipal bonds, required repayment on a set schedule, but the publisher defaulted on its first payment and soon after went bankrupt.

The state alleges that 38 Studios actively misrepresented the true state of its finances at the time the EDC granted these loans. Documents made public in April of this year suggest rather conclusively that members of the EDC were well aware that the company’s financial outlook was very poor, but actively concealed that information to prevent the loan from being rejected. While the full $75 million was never distributed, 38 Studios did reportedly receive around $45 million; with interest and other associated fees, the disputed amount is far larger. If courts find that the company did indeed misrepresent its finances, 38 Studios’ management will be required to repay Rhode Island in full.

Electronic Arts is expanding its pledge to discontinue its “online passes” to include its currently available games, starting with EA Sports titles and others appearing on Xbox Live.

EA previously used online passes to limit used sales of its games, requiring a pass to access certain content on game discs — usually multiplayer components. A code came packaged with the games when bought at retail, which players would need to upload to Xbox Live, the Playstation Network or EA’s Origin platform in order to access the online portions of the game.

Last month, EA announced it would be discontinuing the online pass program on games going forward, because, it said, players didn’t like it. That change is also applying to games that are currently available, with online passes dropping to free on Xbox Live.

In an email to Game Front, EA said these first online pass changes would soon extend to the rest of its catalog on Xbox Live and to PSN as well.

“As we discontinue Online Pass for our new EA titles, we are also in the process of eliminating it from all our existing EA titles as well,” wrote John Reseburg, EA’s senior director of Corporate Communications. “We heard the feedback from players and decided to do away with Online Pass altogether.

“Players will see it first with some EA SPORTS titles, where a prompt to enter an Online Pass code will no longer appear in-game; with other titles we are simply making Online Passes available free of charge online.

“These are rolling updates that are taking effect over the next several weeks. We hope players continue to enjoy our games and online services for a long time to come.”

Publishers and developers previously have worked to circumvent the used sales of their games, because sales of pre-owned copies take place without the publisher receiving any revenue from the sale, but players have expressed dissatisfaction with many of those systems.

The suggestion that the end of 38 Studios was brought about by official action by the State of Rhode Island has been roundly challenged.

New court documents, made public earlier this month and first published by The Providence Journal, describe a company that was dead on arrival well before it ever moved to the Ocean State, and worse, paint an unambiguously damning portrait of corporate ineptitude and corruption.

At issue: the financial health of 38 Studios at the time the company wrangled a $75 Million loan from the state of Rhode Island’s Economic Development Corporation as part of a plan to build a tech industry in the Ocean State. Former 38 Studios executives have long claimed that the company’s future was bright, and it was only bad faith activity on the part of the State of Rhode Island that led to its rapid and now legendary collapse.

However, documents filed as part of the ongoing lawsuit against the defunct video game publisher by the state of Rhode Island, (read them here), provide a different picture: 38 Studios was already on the fiscal ropes when the loan was granted and could never have repaid it. The loan was only granted, so the documents allege, because the company, in collusion with creditors and members of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, actively concealed the true state of its fiscal health.

In order to receive the loan, which was granted as part of an effort to establish a tech center in Rhode Island, 38 Studios had to meet several qualifications. Among them, 38 Studios needed to demonstrate strong growth potential and an ability to repay the loan as scheduled. As part of the loan approval process, an internal credit review was conducted at the behest of the EDC.

On May 28, the EDC analyst informed EDC Deputy Director J. Michael Saul that “There is no financial information discussed at all and no analysis on the ability of the company to perform…. To be honest, I have more information on the typical $10k micro loan than I have on a $75 million request. This is a problem.”

Three days later, the analyst submitted an even more critical evaluation, worth reproducing in full here:

Mike,

The preliminary list of needed items is attached. I am in the
process of organizing my thoughts on this, here is where I
am currently:

The ‘worst case scenario’ as presented by the company
involves a new, commercially successful RPG [role playing
game] title every two years. Is this realistic? Big Huge
Games had their last release (that I can find) in 2006, at
least two games have been cancelled since then. The plan
does not include anything addressing cancelled games and
the associated expenses nor any possibility of delays or that
a game is not successful. The plan shows each game being
more successful than its predecessor. No one bats 1000,
especially not in this industry. Without the RPG release
every two years, the cash flow does not work to support the
debt. The more I look at this, the less comfortable I become
with the credit.

This credit aside, I believe there is an opportunity to create
an industry cluster around the assets we have in place
(RISD, etc.), however I don’t think I can support a $75 million
guarantee to any single company in this industry due to the
wide volatility in commercial success of game releases. One
success does not guarantee another, however the
repayment of debt relies upon continued success. Perhaps
we should develop a toolbox of incentives (including loan
guarantees) to attract companies into a cluster and not rely
on a single company to build the cluster around.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/shocker-corruption-mismanagement-probably-killed-38-studios/feed/3Epic Games Shutters Infinity Blade Dungeons Developerhttp://www.gamefront.com/epic-games-shutters-infinity-blade-dungeons-developer/
http://www.gamefront.com/epic-games-shutters-infinity-blade-dungeons-developer/#commentsSat, 09 Feb 2013 19:19:38 +0000Ian Miles Cheonghttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=205724The studio made up of former Kingdoms of Amalur devs has been unceremoniously shuttered.

Even as more game development studios open for business, several studios have been shut down in 2013. Impossible Studios is the latest victim to the axe, as Epic Games has announced it shuttering of the Maryland-based studio.

Made up of former Kingdoms of Amalur developers, Impossible Studios was founded by Epic Games last year after the dissolution of Big Huge Games and 38 Studios. They were immediately put to work on Infinity Blade: Dungeons for the iOS, which has remained in development for a year. It has since been put on hold.

When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team. It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic.

In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo.

This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.

Epic Games has not provided sufficient reason for shuttering the studio, and appears to remain silent on the matter beyond Sweeney’s announcement. The development comes as a surprise to many—Eurogamer notes that Impossible’s studio director Sean Dunn wrote the following post on his Twitter account just last week:

“Reminded on a daily basis how awesome it is to be a part of the @EpicGames family.”

For a while now, a figure has been floating around the video game industry: only 10 percent of gamers actually complete the games they purchase. This figure was popularized by a 2011 CNN report, which included a quote from an Activision production contractor: “What I’ve been told as a blanket expectation is that 90% of players who start your game will never see the end of it unless they watch a clip on YouTube.”

10% is a dismal figure; one I find hard to swallow. Worse is the fact that developers have been using it as an excuse to create shorter, shallower games. The foundation of the argument is sound — why create a 20-hour game when most players won’t get to appreciate a significant percentage of the content? However, rather than strive to create a richer experience that will compel gamers to play through to completion, the response has been to provide less content to experience. Has it worked? Do shorter games have greater completion rates?

Let’s find out.

We took a sample of 30 games and analyzed their completion rates as well as the average time required to complete them. If “the industry” is right, we should observe much higher completion rates in shorter games.

Things to note about the data:

When discussing completion, we are solely looking at the “campaign” or main story line mode.

Completion rates are based on the percentage of people who earned the Steam achievement for finishing a given game’s story/campaign on any difficulty.

These data won’t take into account people who play offline, on console, or are otherwise not having their stats tracked on Steam. Steam players should serve as a representative subset of the gaming population.

Some of these games have been out longer than others. The longer a game has been released, the more time people have had to complete the campaign, though no correlation was found between release date and completion rate.

Genres are not equally represented — games selected are a mix of the better-known releases of the last two years and some of the most played games on Steam.

The results include people who own a game but have never played it, as these individuals could rarely be factored out via analysis.

Contrary to the touted 10%, these data show that, on average, about a third of gamers complete any given game, and it takes approximately 12 hours to do so. 35% still isn’t a figure to be proud of, but it at least leans closer to “sad” rather than “abysmal.”

It’s worth nothing that none of these games have a completion rate of 55% or greater, and that the titles with the highest completion rates are those whose campaigns took about 6-8 hours to complete: Portal 2, Prototype 2, The Darkness 2, and just to ensure we don’t get the idea that any game that ends with a “2″ is guaranteed 50% completion, Spec Ops: The Line. Does that prove “the industry” right? Not a chance.

Yes, the games with the highest completion rates have short campaigns, but there is no appreciable trend in the data across the 30 titles to suggest that game completion rises as campaign duration falls. Some short games have low completion rates. Some long games have relatively high completion rates.

Let’s gets a sense of how these data are distributed to see if a significant portion of games fall into a certain range of completion or length by looking at some histograms:

What we see is that, for most games, we can expect 35-45% of their players to complete the campaign, and that the grouping is fairly tight — we don’t see wildly divergent results. When looking at a list of a game’s achievements ordered by the percentage of players that attained them, more often than not, the campaign completion achievement sits at around 35%.

Only 4 titles have less than 25% completion: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, L.A. Noire, Red Faction: Armageddon, and Brink. And guess what? Brink is one of the shortest games, as is Red Faction, clocking in at about 6 and 7.5 hours, respectively.

Most campaigns take 6 to 10 hours to complete. Looking at the titles with longer campaigns, we see names like Skyrim, Borderlands 2, and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning — RPGs and open-world games with multiple paths to completion. On the other hand, that 6-10 hour range is a reflection of the fact that most of the titles examined — and most games released nowadays — are shooters with mostly linear campaigns and a propensity for relying on multiplayer.

Putting These Data Together

Now, the time taken to complete a game’s campaign is by no means a measure of the quality of that campaign — more is never necessarily better. Likewise, a higher completion percentage does not necessarily equal a better campaign — surely, a 35% completion rate for a 25-hour campaign is worth more than a 40% completion rate for a 4-hour campaign, right?

By combining these two statistics, we can compare these 30 titles to judge how relatively “engaging” their campaigns are. For our purposes today, we’ll define “engagement” as a campaign’s ability to retain a player.

To do so, let’s apply the percentage of completion to the campaign length and compare the figures. For instance, the relative engagement of a campaign with 50% completion at 10 hours duration should be roughly equivalent to a campaign with 25% completion at 20 hours duration.

At first blush, these results are reminiscent of the game completion length results, with Borderlands 2 and Skyrim topping the list with both having the longest campaigns and being the most “engaging.” However, a closer look would reveal that there is movement among the other titles on the list.

L.A. Noire sees the most dramatic difference, moving from the 7th longest campaign to the 26th most “engaging.” The Darkness 2 ranks 28th in terms of length, but it’s the 20th most engaging title. Prototype 2 is the 21st longest game but the 13th most engaging. Spec Ops: The Line is the 26th longest, but the 18th most engaging. Kingdoms of Amalur drops from the 3rd longest title to the 10th most engaging. Red Faction: Armageddon drops from 22nd longest to 29th most engaging.

Again, “engagement” does not define the quality or popularity of a game. A game like Black Ops 2 finds itself near the bottom of the list because it’s a title that relies heavily on its multiplayer component — players could spend dozens, even hundreds or hours fragging their friends online and never complete the campaign. “Engagement” speaks solely to the merits of the campaign.

When a game like Brink, which can be beaten in less than six hours, is only completed by 19 percent of its players, does that suggest that a three hour campaign is the answer? No. Absolutely, unequivocally no.

Why does Skyrim’s campaign manage to retain a relatively high amount of players? Because it delivers an immersive, engrossing experience that keeps its audience engaged for hours upon hours. Rather than point to length as the problem without further thought, developers should analyze why gamers aren’t completing their game. Does it become frustratingly difficult toward the end? Is it clichéd and unimaginative? Is the story too complicated to follow? Too simple to be interesting? Are the characters boring? Annoying? Could a 13-year old have come up with the plot?

Treat the disease, not the symptom. The problem isn’t that players aren’t completing your games — it’s that your games aren’t making players want to complete them. We’re not saying that every game needs to be Skyrim, but every game should give your players a reason to stay glued to the screen for hours on end.

Games are more like novels than like movies. They are entertainment mediums that require hours to complete and that the audience can progress through at a pace of their choosing. People call a good book “a real page-turner” when it is so compelling that the reader can’t wait to see what’s on the next page; good games follow that same philosophy — players can’t wait to see what happens next. And once you’ve so captivated a player, it doesn’t matter how long your campaign is.

The first of three auctions selling off 38 Studios’ assets brought in total sales of about $180,000.

The October 16 auction took place in Timonium, MD, and revolved around property belonging to Big Huge Games, the Maryland-based subsidiary of 38 Studios. Items auctioned off included office furniture, computers, televisions, and game consoles. The highest-selling item was an animation suit that sold for $9,500. Over 300 people attended the auction, with 200 more following the bidding online.

Richard Land, the receiver for 38 Studios in the auction, said:

“In my experience, Monday’s auction can be considered robust. Having this many bidders helps to extract greater value for the property.”

The next auction is scheduled for October 23 and will see similar items put up for sale. The third and final auction will concern 38 Studios’ intellectual property and is expected to take place in about three months.

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Turbine announced today some key additions to its leadership team, including Ken Rolston of The Elder Scrolls fame. Joining Turbine as Director of Design, Rolston is one of the most accomplished fantasy RPG game designers of all time.

Alan Villani joins Turbine as Vice President of Technology, coming NetherRealm Studios, where he was responsible for driving the technology platform that supported Mortal Kombat. Jai Singh joins Turbine as Executive Director of Technical Operations, coming from a background with Zynga managing the technology infrastructure for some of the largest social games in the world. Demetrius Comes joins as Executive Director of Engineering, coming from Petroglyph Games and bringing almost 20 years of technology experience.

Disappointing news for those of you following the collapse of 38 Studios and its aftermath who were hoping for cathartic drama: the US Attorney’s investigation has ended, and no federal charges will be filed.

This means that, at least as far as US Law is concerned, 38 Studios management is guilty of nothing more serious than being really, really bad at their jobs. Well, that, and being kind of dickish to their employees. The federal investigation found no criminal violations, ruling out (among other things) Bank Fraud. No doubt that Schilling and company are breathing a sigh of relief, though it would be premature to break out the champagne just yet. The federal investigation is distinct from that being conducted by the State of Rhode Island, which is still ongoing.

At issue is the 75 million dollar loan given to 38 Studios in exchange for relocating the developer to Rhode Island. The company’s inability to repay the loan – they failed to make first scheduled payment on time, and when they scrounged the money together, it came out of their employee’s paychecks – triggered the shockingly quick demise of the company. Since then, a very troubling picture has emerged. The company failed to produce the game for which it was founded after nearly 6 years in development. The only game released by 38 Studios, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, was created by Big Huge Games, a subsidiary 38 Studios purchased from THQ in 2009. Over the course of its life, 38 Studios appears to have been dependent largely on securing new investments to cover old debts.

Of course, Schilling continues to insist that the real reason for the company’s collapse is that Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee made their failure to repay the huge loan they received public. His contention is that the Governor’s reveal scared off potential investors. And he’s right, of course. It was painfully unfair to warn people who might have sunk money into a 38 Studios that they might never see a return on their investment. For Shame.

Whether or not the company will ultimately be found to have committed any violations of Rhode Island law, we will at least have it to kick around for a little bit longer. I can’t pretend that doesn’t make me happy.

38 Studios’ assets are set for auction, including Xbox 360 developer kits — but not if Microsoft has anything to say about it.

Auctioneers at the SJ Corio Company will auction off 38 Studios’ assets on October 16 in Maryland and on October 23 in Rhode Island. Assets include computers, printers, copiers, projectors, televisions, and more.

“Xbox 360 Development Kits (XDK) are the property of Microsoft and are only licensed to authorized studios and may not be assigned or sold to any third party without the written consent of Microsoft. We will be contacting the appropriate parties involved in the auction of 38 Studios’ assets to remove the XDK units from the auction listing and to secure the return of the consoles to Microsoft.”

If anyone was looking forward to getting a hold of one of those kits, seems as though you’re out of luck, sadly.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/38-studios-assets-to-be-auctioned-microsoft-makes-legal-claim-to-360-dev-kits/feed/1Amalur MMO Would Have (kinda) Aped The Secret Worldhttp://www.gamefront.com/amalur-mmo-would-have-kinda-aped-the-secret-world/
http://www.gamefront.com/amalur-mmo-would-have-kinda-aped-the-secret-world/#commentsThu, 13 Sep 2012 18:22:20 +0000Ross Lincolnhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=183814That headline is a bit misleading, as the similarities between The Secret World and the now dead Kingdoms of Amalur...

That headline is a bit misleading, as the similarities between The Secret World and the now dead Kingdoms of Amalur MMO codenamed ‘Project Copernicus’ before 38 Studios’ fantastic death by mismanagement earlier this year, are shallow. But it is true that like The Secret World, Copernicus would also feature a gameplay mechanic in which death could not take the player.

In Amalur, a phenomenon called The Well of Souls brings the player character back to life. The idea for Copernicus is that this phenomenon would have been extended to everyone in the game’s universe, effectviely nullifying death. About this, he said “what does it mean to the societal structures of the world when all of the sudden you’ve got immortality? The obvious answer was everybody’s going to be happy, we’re all going to live forever!” But, he made clear, there are big problems with widespread immortality. Populations continue to increase, for instance, making space and food premium commodities. There’s also political problems to contemplate.

“What does it do to the leader of a church whose entire power base is predicated on promising you an afterlife?”, Salvatore point out. “What about the old lady whose lost her husband and children. Does she want to live forever? Does she want to go through the Well of Souls? What about the emotions of the last people that lost a spouse, mother, husband, child or best friend before the Wells became active?” Heavy stuff to be sure, and evidence that at least a grain of intelligence was manning the gaming side of 38 Studios’ doomed business. Of course, this doesn’t address the question of the game’s insanely long development time, nor the fact that MMOs are in serious decline, almost all of them switching to a F2P model that could not possibly support something with the kind of ambition Salvatore hints at here.

Still, it’s a promising hint. Perhaps we’ll find out if a third party picks up the rights to the IP. In the meantime, I’ll keep munching on my popcorn, waiting for more delicious gossip about 38 Studios’ decline to trickle out.

The collapse of 38 Studios is a tantalizing woulda/coulda/shoulda. The company released only one game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, before collapsing. That game wasn’t even developed by 38 Studios but instead was made by 38 subsidiary Big Huge Games (Now reconstituted as Impossible Games). But 38 Studios did actually have a game of its own, the MMO code-named Project Copernicus, a game that was never finished and probably died along with 38 Studios.

Maybe Project Copernicus was awesome. I suspect not, since they had so little to show after 6 years, but what do I know? According to 38 Studios’ founder Curt Schilling, it was going to defy the laws of economics and potentially change gaming in the process. That is, if you buy what he is selling in an interview with Boston Magazine, in which Schilling talked about what Project Copernicus would have been like had they finished it. According to him, it would have been filled with gumdrops and lasers and unicorns and… no, wait, it would have been the BEST F2P MMO EVARZ:

We were going to be the first triple-A, hundred-million-dollar-plus, free-to-play, micro-transaction-based MMO. That was one of our big secrets. I think when we eventually showed off the game for the first time, the atom bomb was going to be free-to-play. When we announced that at the end, that was gonna be the thing that, I think, shocked the world.”

Wow. Just. Wow. Just. I’ll give you a moment to stop sniggering.

Done?

OK, if this sounds ridiculous, it’s because it’s part of Schilling’s ongoing campaign to paint the decline and fall of 38 Studios as the fault of everyone else but 38 Studios. Boston Magazine reports that in a follow up email, Schilling claimed that making Project Copernicus F2P was yet another reason the company was totes close to securing additional funding. And yes, he once again claimed that the company would have survived had Rhode Island’s governor not said rude things about how they weren’t paying their debts. Schilling claimed that F2P blew potential investors’ minds, saying “NO ONE was expecting it, and it was another thing that changed the tenor of conversations with investors late in the game.” Supposedly, these investors were about to throw more money down the pit invest heavily in 38 Studios, that is until Lincoln Chafee’s comments went public.

Sure. I believe this.

I’m going to come out and say it: Curt Schilling needs to stop talking about all the cool stuff 38 Studios was totally going to do before it went tits up. I’m sure they had some plans, but as we now know, it wasn’t going to happen. Ever. They weren’t even half as close to securing additional funding as Schilling constantly insists, making his equally constant attempts to blame Lincoln Chaffee for his mistakes look inceedibly petty. At this point it’s starting to sound like your drunk friend who keeps claiming he once dropped a lottery ticket worth millions, and missed out on what would have been a tremendous fortune. Or the guy who totally wrote a song that sounds like Common People years before Pulp, but never got his band off the ground.

The rights to the assets were granted by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath, in a hearing yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware as part of 38 Studios’ ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. (Due to Delaware’s ridiculously low corporate tax rates, about half of all US corporations are incorporated there.) With this decision, the state of Rhode Island may at least be able to recoup some of what was squandered lost when the company died. The plan is to sell these assets and apply them to the loan. It seems to me, however, that if the state were smart, they’d retain the rights to Kingdoms of Amalur and license it to an interested studio, then recoup the losses from sales of a sequel. They probably won’t do this because socialism or some other fear of an attack on capitalism*, so the best one can hope for is that they’ll find a developer willing to do something with the franchise.

This doesn’t end 38 Studios’ woes, however. The Rhode Island Attorney’s General office, the IRS and the FBI are all conducting investigations into its collapse.